Part 4

I rode off; and on my return, half an hour later, the old fellow was in our kitchen, calmly consuming a large pot of porridge. It turned out that he had ordered ’Manthla to be ready to accompany him at once to the kraal of Indebbelish. Alas, however, for the ‘best-laid schemes!’ When the _babba_ (father) went into the Kaffir-house, he found ’Manthla had again fled. His anger and disgust were now turned upon Capelle, who vowed he had had no hand in her flight. The father retorted, the son recriminated, and it was only by rushing out and brandishing my riding-whip that order was restored. The old man suddenly grinned and exclaimed: ‘Allee right, allee right!’ and then his eye catching sight of a big iron pot which had fallen into disuse, he asked if we could spare it. My wife sarcastically inquired if there was anything else he would like; upon which Pank requested a bottle of castor-oil, for the purpose of anointing his body when he reached home. This being given him, the injured father strode away, with the big pot over his head like a huge helmet, and we hoped we had seen the last of him. Not at all! In five minutes or so the old rascal came back, begging Capelle’s wages for the next three months. It is customary for the _babbas_ to collect the money due to their sons, but payment in advance was altogether without precedent. Happily, by disbursing the wages due for a month which had almost expired, we for a time got rid of the father of our heroine.

It is time that we again followed her fortunes. When ’Manthla ran away from our house, she betook herself to Umhlassu, who, true lover that he was, forsook his work, packed up his blankets, and went off with his bride to his own kraal. Feasting and dancing were again indulged in, this time, however, by the bridegroom’s relatives. Hearing of this, the unsuccessful Indebbelish indignantly demanded the cattle back from ’Manthla’s father; but this just request was point-blank refused. Indebbelish saw he had no other alternative but to trudge into town to institute an action for ‘breach of promise’ against Babba Pank. The machinery of the native court in Maritzburg was in due course set in motion, and the case appointed to come off in three weeks, a fact we knew one evening by the advent of Indebbelish, who was about the most handsome Kaffir we had ever seen. He came to have a chat with Capelle, who had favoured his wooing in time past, and was still friendly. We naturally objected to have our larder drawn upon alternately by the plaintiff and defendant in the pending suit, and so declined to give Indebbelish board and lodging. But he made up for this by calling night after night and smoking Capelle’s tobacco.

At length the great day of the trial dawned, and with it came the beaming face of ’Manthla’s father with his irrepressible ‘Allee right!’ He marched in and billeted himself upon us for about six days. I am not aware whether this was owing to prolonged litigation or to the enjoyment of living at some one else’s expense. At all events, when the week expired, the _babba_ vouchsafed the information that the case had gone against him, and that he had to restore the bullocks, at the same time cheerily adding: ‘It’s allee right, allee right!’ Nevertheless, he went away very downcast, after another ineffectual attempt to collect Capelle’s wages in advance. A day or two afterwards, the cattle were returned to Indebbelish with a bad grace; but Umhlassu gave Babba Pank eight oxen, with a promise of other two at some future period; and the heart of the old man rejoiced. The sympathies of my wife had been aroused in favour of Indebbelish; but her interest instantly vanished when she found that ‘the poor, forsaken young man,’ long previous to his ‘courtship’ of ’Manthla, was already possessed of three wives! When Indebbelish received back the oxen from the _babba_, he simply drove them off to another kraal, and purchased an ebony virgin to complete his connubial quartet.

About eighteen months afterwards, I happened to be amongst the Saturday morning throng on the Market Square of Maritzburg. Hundreds of people—English, Dutch, Indian, and Kaffir—were moving about the dusty expanse of ground, which was covered with auctioneers’ stands, bullock-wagons, sacks of produce, cows and horses on sale, and large quantities of the miscellaneous household goods which find their way to colonial marts. At one part of the ground, a number of Kaffir wives were squatted alongside heaps of firewood, which they had conveyed into town, and were now selling. As I observed them, my boy Capelle suddenly drew my attention to a woman who was walking towards the group. She carried a great load of firewood in long lengths poised upon her head, and a baby slung behind her in a blanket. I dimly recollected her face; Capelle told me her name, and ran forward to speak to her. It was none other than the heroine of the love-match—poor ’Manthla!

CONCERNING LOVE.[4]

IN TWO PARTS.—PART II.

Having in the former part of this paper considered certain theories concerning the nature, qualities, power, and vitality of love, we would now invite the attention of our readers to some of the symptoms, evidences, and effects of that passion. Here we find ourselves upon somewhat firmer ground, for the field now before us is not so much that of theory and definition as of observation and experience. While the profoundest philosophers find themselves at a loss in attempting to formulate some satisfactory theory on the subject, the most unsophisticated observer can tell us something of the signs and tokens by which love manifests its presence. The symptoms of the tender passion are both varied and varying, and we have it on the authority of Addison that there is no other passion which produces such contrary effects in so great a degree. Byron describes love as bearing within itself ‘the very germ of change.’

For a thoroughly comprehensive catalogue of love’s tokens take the reply of Silvius to Phebe in _As You Like It_. ‘Good shepherd,’ says Phebe, ‘tell this youth what ’tis to love.’ ‘It is,’ replies Silvius, ‘to be all made of sighs and tears; it is to be all made of faith and service; it is to be all made of fantasy, all made of passion, and all made of wishes; all adoration, duty, and observance; all humbleness, all patience, and impatience; all purity, all trial, all observance.’ If the foregoing be accepted as an accurate description of what it is to love, one is enabled to understand the belief that the reason why Love is not included among the virtues is that it combines them all in one.

Dryden has given us several accounts of the way in which the tender passion operates upon the mind. In one passage he says:

Love various minds does variously inspire: He stirs in gentle natures gentle fire, Like that of incense on the altar laid; But raging flames tempestuous souls invade: A fire which every windy passion blows; With pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows.

The same writer, descending to more everyday observations, and speaking of the condition of a person in love, declares:

You pine, you languish, love to be alone, Think much, speak little, and in speaking sigh.

This is certainly a faithful description of the conventional lover, whom you meet in novels, and there are no doubt a great many sentimental people who still languish and sigh, after the old romantic pattern. Yet there are a great many more who get through all their love experiences with very little languishing and very few sighs. They are much too busy, or too cheerful, or too matter-of-fact, to indulge their passion to the pining or languishing degree; so that tears and sighs and groans are not by any means inevitable or necessary symptoms of love. While one lover is to be found ‘sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow,’ another is discovered basking joyfully in the sunshine of his love, and singing with Moore that

There’s nothing half so sweet in life As love’s young dream.

Ovid remarks that tears are by no means unserviceable in love, because by tears you may touch a heart of stone. He therefore advises the lover to endeavour that his mistress should find him with his cheeks bathed in tears; and he adds, that if you are not quite equal to the shedding of genuine tears, you may bathe your eyes and cheeks by other means. But Ovid is discoursing on the _art_ of love, and what we are at present considering are the true marks of the genuine passion. There are, no doubt, few matters in which there has been, since the world began, so much dissimulation and hypocrisy as in love affairs, and Ovid’s artful suggestions recall the profane observation of a cynical writer, that ‘Love consists of a little sighing, a little crying, a little dying—and a deal of lying.’ It is not our present purpose, however, to enter upon the false in love, or the spurious impersonations which stalk about in his name. Let it suffice to say that Ovid’s crafty advice is founded on the fact that true love is often tearful and desponding. It may not be, as Silvius puts it, ‘all sighs and tears,’ but even the most sanguine love may have its moments of sadness and doubt. ‘Love,’ says one of the poets—

Love, though most sure, Yet always to itself seems insecure.

And Scott declares that ‘Love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.’ Another poet argues that unless you quake and are struck dumb when your mistress enters the room, you have loved amiss, and must begin anew.

But if love is sometimes downcast and fearful, it just as often soars aloft on the pinions of hope, for ‘Love can hope where Reason would despair.’ The lover has a miraculous way of finding hope and encouragement amid the most unpromising circumstances. He can feed for weeks together on a word or a glance; and if his mistress frown and turn her back upon him, he must still lay the flattering unction to his soul that she merely frowns, as Shakspeare expresses it somewhere, to beget more love in him. Truly, the lover had need be ‘all patience,’ for ’tis a fickle god he woos. If he would not woo in vain, he must bear with a thousand caprices, inconstancies, and tyrannies.

Lovers are proverbially blind to each other’s shortcomings, and their praises of each other are therefore untrammelled by ordinary scruples on the score of veracity. ‘There never,’ says Bacon, ‘was a proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved.’ It is therefore at once easy and natural for men and women under the influence of the tender passion to present to each other, and to swallow with the keenest relish, a great deal of this kind of food.

If we are to credit the French poet Chamfort, who says he has seen women of all countries, an Italian woman does not believe that she is loved by her lover unless he is capable of committing a crime for her, an Englishwoman an extravagance, and a Frenchwoman a folly. Let us hope that worthier performances than these are sometimes demanded in token of love’s sincerity—acts of self-denial, of merit, of generosity, and of faithfulness. Richter is of opinion, however, that ‘love requires not so much proofs as expressions of love—it demands little else than the power to feel and to requite love.’ Dryden gives expression to the same idea, when he says:

All other debts may compensation find, But Love is strict, and must be paid in kind.

How often has love spurned riches, power, enjoyment, the good opinion of the world, and everything else, in order to meet responsive love amid poverty, suffering, deprivation, and even dishonour! True love will sacrifice everything to be requited; for ‘Lovers all but love disdain.’

Whatever form its manifestations may take, it may be assumed that the fickle god will not fail to show itself. ‘There are two things not to be hidden,’ says the proverb—‘Love and a cough.’ It may be expressed by sighs and tears, by a dejected and distracted mien, and by what Shakspeare calls ‘the pale complexion of true love.’ It may be discovered in tell-tale blushes—‘celestial rosy red, Love’s proper hue,’ as Milton puts it—in bashful awkwardness, and in a distressing self-consciousness in the presence of the adored object. And it may be shown no less plainly and emphatically in quiet self-devotion, dutifulness, and self-sacrifice. It often identifies itself with various kinds of manias, such as a mania for composing amatory epistles or writing verses, a mania for going to church, for haunting a particular street, or for buying kid gloves, patent-leather boots, and eau-de-Cologne. These, with many other similar and equally harmless symptoms, are quite familiar.

Then there is a more extravagant class of manifestations that the hard unfeeling world would describe as folly. When love reaches what Bacon calls ‘the mad degree,’ there is absolutely no limit to the excesses that may be perpetrated in its name. But of the comparatively harmless kinds of folly there is usually a considerable admixture in even the sedatest loves. Thomson describes the lover as ‘the very fool of nature.’ It is not, of course, to be supposed that he is ever conscious of his folly—when he is engaged in it, at all events—for

Love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit.

Yet it cannot be denied that the folly in love is, to the lovers, by no means the least agreeable part of it.

I could not love, I’m sure, One who in love were wise,

is Cowley’s frank confession; and most lovers, if they carefully examine their experience and speak the truth, will echo the sentiment. Wisdom would never give utterance to all those fond, foolish fancies, those ‘airy nothings,’ and sweet flatteries that the lover prizes so much; and wisdom would often dictate a degree of prudence and reserve and formality that could never be endured by two hearts that beat as one.

The proverb holds, that to be wise and love, Is hardly granted to the gods above.

After what we have seen of Cupid’s fickleness and ever-varying moods, it will not be imagined that when love is not all smiles and sunshine, it is therefore insincere or undesirable. In the words of the poet Walsh:

Love is a medley of endearments, jars, Suspicions, quarrels, reconcilements, wars, Then peace again.

After the storm, the sun returns as bright and genial as before, and the air is all the purer and the sweeter for the electric war that has disturbed its stillness. The love that cannot outlive a few misunderstandings and disagreements can hardly claim to be considered as genuine, and had better be allowed to pass at once into the limbo of exploded myths. The truth is, however, that Love often dispenses his favours in a very eccentric way, and each favour is sometimes paid for with a more than proportionate amount of suffering; so that the lover must be often tempted to exclaim with Addison:

Mysterious love! uncertain treasure! Hast thou more of pain or pleasure?

Yet he will probably resolve the problem in much the same manner as the poet does in completing the stanza:

Endless torments dwell about thee, Yet who would live and live without thee?

Spenser finds that ‘love with gall and honey doth abound,’ and in computing the proportion of each, he expresses the belief that for every drachm of honey there is a pound of gall. Notwithstanding this, however, he is prepared to assert that

One loving hour For many years of sorrow can dispense; A drachm of sweet is worth a pound of sour.

This is the attitude which the lover must adopt; and if the gall preponderate in his experience—which we sincerely hope it won’t—he must comfort and sustain himself with thoughts of the honey he has enjoyed, and that may be yet in store for him.

If the course of true love does not run smooth, that is not always because the way is not clear enough or level enough, but very often entirely on account of Love’s injudicious and impracticable behaviour. If Love will indulge his propensity to masquerade in the guise of frenzy or delirium, folly or extravagance, there is nothing at all surprising in his getting into trouble. But what is the use of sermonising? Notwithstanding all the striking lessons he has received, and the painful experiences through which he has passed, Cupid is still much the same wilful, rollicking, mischief-loving sprite that he was when he first appeared upon our planet; and so, no doubt, he will remain to the end of the chapter.

At the same time, when all is said and done, is it not just possible that Love gets blamed for a good deal of trouble and mischief for which he is really not responsible? Do people not often cry out against Love’s tyranny and unreasonableness, when they ought to blame their own selfishness, or pride, or blundering stupidity? Love must be treated as an honoured guest, not as a slave; and if he leave us, may we not reasonably ask ourselves, before we begin to upbraid and revile him, whether we have not driven him away by our own neglect and heartlessness and querulous impatience? When we consider how he is sometimes treated, the wonder is, not so much that he should have departed, as that he should have stayed so long.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Concluded from page 156.

THE PROGRESS OF CYCLING.

It is exceedingly interesting to the reflective cyclist of the present day to indulge in a retrospect of ten or fifteen years, and compare his present position with the status that subsisted in those early days of the wheel. Nothing could better illustrate the rapid growth of this comparatively modern method of locomotion than the spread and increasing importance of the various Exhibitions in different parts of the country devoted entirely or in part to demonstrating the advances made in the two or three wheeler during the recess of winter. And these advances have been most marked during the past year, the machines now exhibited showing plainly the care and attention bestowed upon them. In one important detail in particular this is markedly apparent, namely, in that of gearing for tricycles. It is a well-known fact among cyclists that the temporary exhaustion following the rapid traversing of a smooth level road does not proceed in a tenth degree so much from the actual strength expended as upon the rapid exertion required. To obviate this, a system of gearing-up has been introduced, whereby the wheels make more revolutions than the feet. But as this would place the rider at a disadvantage in ascending inclines or in traversing rough roads, a system of gearing level or down has been combined, whereby, by a mechanical arrangement, the wheels perform either the same number of revolutions as the feet, or less. The combination of these systems has produced some of the most intricately ingenious mechanisms that have lately appeared before the public, and cyclists are busily engaged in testing and otherwise determining which system shall be introduced into their mounts for the coming season.

In the June number of the _Journal_ for last year we predicted the approach of a period of unusual activity in cycling, and the prediction has not proved fallacious; for the season which closed with the approach of last winter was remarkable in many respects, as the following will show. In October, the extraordinary distance of two hundred and sixty miles was ridden on a two-wheeler in twenty-four hours over ordinary roads; a tricycle under similar circumstances has covered over two hundred and twenty-one miles when ridden by a gentleman, and one hundred and fifty-two miles when propelled by a lady. In August, a tricycle was driven from John o’ Groats to Land’s End—ten hundred and seven miles—in fourteen days; the bicycle record by a shorter route being a little over nine days; whilst in October a bicyclist rode from London to Derby—a distance of one hundred and twenty-six miles—without either stopping or dismounting. Many feats of endurance and determination similar to the above have taken place upon the public roads; whilst upon the racing-path, the great feature has been the ‘record cutting’ of the year. In 1882, a well-known doctor and amateur bicyclist rode twenty miles and three hundred and twenty-five yards in an hour; in 1883, this was beaten by a professional at Leicester, who covered twenty miles nine hundred and five yards in the same time; whilst the time for one mile has been lowered from two minutes forty-one and three-fifth seconds to two minutes forty and four-fifth seconds. The time for one mile for a tricycle was also lowered to three minutes five seconds, and all existing tricycling records from a quarter of a mile to one hundred miles were beaten last year. But the rapid advances which characterise the sport will doubtless enable faster times than the above to be made in the not far distant future, and the records which we now behold with pardonable pride may sink into comparative insignificance.

The objection has been raised by many opponents of cycling that it is of no practical value to mankind apart from the means it provides for healthy recreation. This objection no longer exists. The tricycle is now used extensively in many parts of the kingdom by professional men; clergymen in particular are very partial to it; to the doctor it is a positive boon, ay, and to the patient as well at times, for in an emergency, the ready steed can be mounted at once, and no delay caused by awakening drowsy coachmen and harnessing horses. A new description of tricycle now enables enterprising tradesmen, notably news-agents, grocers, and others whose wares are of a comparatively light nature, to deliver their goods with more despatch than formerly; and the Post-office authorities have been alive to the advantages offered by this means of distribution by obtaining machines for rural districts in connection with the Parcels Post and the delivery of letters. The Inland Revenue Office by a recent order recognises the tricycle; and the police in some of our colonies have used them for some time. These facts plainly show that the tricycle has entered upon a new phase of its existence, and that a noble and useful career undoubtedly awaits it.

The ‘freemasonry of the wheel’ has been pushed on to a greater extent than ever during the past year, and is a factor which undoubtedly influences a large proportion of the British public. This is shown by the increasing numbers of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, which increased from seven to nearly twelve thousand during 1883, and promises to reach even twenty thousand during the current year. The ladies are giving their heartiest support, and are joining in large numbers; whilst the movement offers so many attractions to all riders in providing touring companions, hotels with fixed tariffs in nearly every town in Great Britain and the continent, good-fellowship and congenial society wherever the cyclist may happen to alight, and other advantages too numerous to mention, that it includes in its roll many of the nobility and gentry in all parts of the land, and is supported by some of the highest dignitaries of the Church and members of the legal, medical, military, and naval professions.